The supply of contact lenses poses many challenging and relatively unique requirements. Each lens, although not necessarily custom made to the eye of the patient, is characterized by a number of lens parameters each of which may vary through quite an extensive range of values. It is currently not unusual, for example, for companies in the business of production of lenses to maintain an inventory of as many as 25,000 different lathe cut toric and spherical lens types. Such companies typically maintain elaborate, labor intensive direct telephone ordering facilities, and even so, the precise requested lens is often not currently available and a doctor must choose from a number of approximately appropriate lenses which are available. Typically, the requested lenses are pulled from inventory and shipped through a convenient method, to be tried by the doctor with the patient.
The onset of disposable lenses promises to alleviate many of these problems, and yet presents still others which heretofore have not been faced. Such lenses, the production of which is taught by U.S. Pat. Nos. 4460489, 4565348, and 4495313 promise substantial reductions in the variety and total number of lens types in inventory, because of the inherent production accuracy and relatively improved predictability of lens parameters during the production process. Nevertheless, a complete inventory of spherical and toric lenses still could number in the thousands of inventory entries.
While as of the filing hereof, it is uncertain just what percentage of total contact lens users will convert to a disposable lens system, informed judgments indicate that the adoption will be widespread, and that formidable problems will be presented in supplying the needs of patients and attending physicians.
At any given time, an attending "eye care professional" (i.e. optometrist, ophthalmologist or optician) will have a panel of patients who have adopted disposable lens programs, each having a standing prescription for lenses which will include not only the standard lens parameters of base curve, magnification, etc. for each eye, but additionally the wear and replacement cycle for lenses. For example, patients may be directed to remove and replace lenses most likely on a one or two week cycle (although in the end, accumulated experience and judgment will be controlling, perhaps even extending wear cycles longer than two weeks, and in all events custom prescribed to the individual patient). Clearly, whether lenses are provided to the patient at a rate of two, six, or even ten or twenty at a time, it is highly desirable both to the eye care professional and to the patient that lenses be provided on an automatic refill basis, and that unnecessary or overly frequent visits be avoided. On the other hand, the relatively critical nature even of every day eye care demands that the eye care professional have ultimate control and discretion of the dispensing process, and hence that the eye care professional be able to create the prescription in the first instance, and be able to update or vary the prescription on such basis as medical discretion may dictate. Throughout, the reasonable expectations of both patient and eye care professional must be fulfilled respecting speedy, accurate, and satisfactory availability of lenses for purposes of initial patient fitting, ongoing lens supply, variation or alteration of prescription, and relatively minimal inventory burden upon the physician. Correspondingly, although the ultimate goal of the system is patient and eye care professional satisfaction, the normal business requirements of accurate inventory, billings, product traceability, and overall minimum cost burdens must be satisfied.
It is accordingly an object of the present invention to provide methods and apparatus tailored specifically to the requirements of disposable contact lenses. It is an associated object that such systems and methods promptly and accurately allow attending eye care professionals to maintain acclose doctor--patient relationship, and provide initial and ongoing prescription fulfillment with minimal intrusion into that relationship.
It is a further object to provide methods and apparatus which automatically supply a patient's ongoing lens requirements, as directed by the eye care professional in accordance with a prescribed replacement schedule, and to maintain associated inventory and billing procedures.
Finally, but by no means least, it is an object that such goals be met in a cost-effective fashion, thereby to minimize the price burden both on eye care professionals and on patients, and to permit effective delivery of the functional advantages inherently attendant to disposable contact lenses.